Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am just following up on my Member’s statement earlier. I wanted to ask the question to the Minister of Health on the policy that… Is there a policy and can he share the policy on the timeline for getting medical travel approved for patients and the amount of time it takes to get that communicated to patients for out-of-town travel for medical appointments? Is there a policy? What is it and what is the timeline of getting that information communicated to our residents for out-of-town travel? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you, Mr. Moses. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Medical travel is a clinical decision, first of all. Secondly, the policy is that medical travel, from the office here in Yellowknife, does contact the authority; the authority contacts the patient. The patient would then contact medical travel and make the arrangements for the travel and to make it to the appointment. It should generally be a fairly simple process. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, it should be a fairly simple process; however, I am continuing to find problems within the process itself. Like I mentioned earlier, I have a constituent who had to wait over a year to get another appointment. The process might be simple, but getting that appointment, if it is a specialty appointment with a specialist, might not be always available, so that simple process is not always there.
Can the Minister provide some information on how many no-shows the department has incurred over the past year for patients who are missing their appointments in the NWT and southern travel as well? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
From my understanding, we are moving about 11,000 patients annually through medical travel, so the last number that I have from the Stanton Hospital annual general meeting was that the no-shows are 12 percent. Thank you.
With the 12 percent just for Stanton Territorial Hospital, but we are not talking about appointments that are missed down south or even appointments that got cancelled or people not making their flights because they couldn’t make the arrangements in such a short time period where they were approved for medical travel and approved for their appointments but couldn’t make it because of the late process in getting them the information. That 12 percent alone for Stanton, I am sure, didn’t come cheap. Does the Minister have, for Stanton alone, a cost for that 12 percent, where it cost the government for all these no-shows and missed appointments?
I don’t have the costs here. I’m sure that we would be able to determine the cost of what it would be when someone misses an appointment, but this is a missed appointment for an individual that doesn’t show up at the doctor’s office and a percentage of that time will come down to a cost. Sometimes they replace the patient with a waiting list, but what I can do is develop a cost for the percentage.
That percentage was a percentage that came from medical travel. It was all medical travel that includes the medical travel within the territory coming to Yellowknife, going to Inuvik, or also travelling down south to Edmonton. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Moses.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Without just Yellowknife and Stanton travel, would the Minister commit to providing all expenses on missed appointments and no-shows in the Northwest Territories as well as southern travel for patients that went down south and this government covered the expenses and either the patient missed the appointment, they didn’t make it on time, or the appointment got cancelled? Would the Minister commit to providing us with those details?
Really, that money could be spent more effectively and we might even be contributing to the problem of these no-shows and missed appointments with the medical travel process.
Mr. Speaker, yes, I will commit to providing the information to the Member of this House. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The honourable Member for Weledeh, Mr. Bromley.
